Sneak Peaks & Excerpts

Occasionally, Isobelle will gift Obernewtyn.net with an exclusive snippet of writing from an upcoming story she's working on. Here we list those excerpts.Some are visible to members only, at her request, until their public release.[hr][/hr]

Perchance to Dream is a short story by Isobelle Carmody which appeared in the Dreaming Again anthology in 2008. In this podcast by The District of Wonders website you can listen to the entire story, read by Canadian voice artist, Cynthia P. Colby.

Bear Flower is a short story that was published in the 1996 anthology, The First Time II by Hodder Headline Australia Children's Books. In it, some of Australia and New Zealand's writers for young people come up with true accounts of actual "first times", from the very first glances to the aftermaths. As such, the reader's discretion is advised; this story contains sexual themes and isn't PG!Viewable to members only!

...Here’s the thing. I hate kids. Always have. I mean, I know the job of the race, biologically speaking, is to achieve immortality through reproduction, but the idea of getting impregnated and blowing up like a balloon as I serve as a carrier and service unit for this other person who will eventually burst out of me in the most terrifying way imaginable, then carry on using me one way or another for the rest of my life, is right up there with throwing myself off the top of a twenty- story building...

...So there was a girl. Young but not too young. A face as unformed as an egg, so that one could not tell if she would turn out to be fair or astonishingly ugly. She was to be sent to a city in another land by a mother and father in the midst of a divorce. The one thing they could agree upon was that the girl should not be exposed to the violence they meant to commit on their life. There was a quality in her that made it impossible to do the ravening that the end of love required...

...She recognized him from the holovids and nuscan bites as soon as she was ushered into his office. Tall and handsome, electric blue eyes, a great eccentric mane of white-blond hair and a smile that seemed just a little too bright and wide in real life. William Reichler was fleshier than in the vids, but the visual slimdown might not be vanity...

...At the far end of a narrow passage, a yellow light flashed a dull summons in the grainy dimness. The ground underfoot was broken and dangerously uneven, but a sense of urgency drove me on. 'Stop!' a woman's voice commanded. The murk quivered and thinned and I saw Dragon ahead, sitting on a broken stone column and gazing into an ornamental pond surrounded by a terrace of cracked paving stones. A wall mosaic half-obscured by a shaggy creeper rose up behind her and the full moon floated in the pool at her feet, its light limning her face and hair silver...

Isobelle has sent over a very special treat this morning, to go hand in hand with the announcement of the upcoming anthology, The Wilful Eye. She's sent an excerpt - three pages - of her contribution, entitled "Moth's Tale".

What is it about airports? Case thought. There was something almost mythical about the level of boredom and stagnation that you experienced, trapped in these mazes of shining glass and plastic laid out over acres of bilious looking carpet. Yet in movies airports were always represented as glamorous and slightly dangerous places, where pursuit scenes erupted violently in the midst of all that coming and going, the protagonist racing along moving walkways waving a gun...

Penguin's Fantasy section of their site has a very exciting Evolution of the Obernewtyn Chronicles Covers .pdf (6-7MB .pdf file), which includes a history of Obernewtyn Chronicles covers and detailed descriptions of how the artists arrived at the final covers we see published today, using stock photos, commissioned paintings, Photoshop and Illustrator.